Representation of Space and Form in Maya Painting on Pottery

Society for American Archaeology

Representation of Space and Form in Maya Painting on PotteryAuthor(s): Terence GriederSource: American Antiquity, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Apr., 1964), pp. 442-448Published by: Society for American ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/277979 .

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REPRESENTATION OF SPACE AND FORM IN MAYA PAINTING ON POTTERY

TERENCE GRIEDER

ABSTRACT

The Maya imagined both the visible and the conceptual in three-dimensional form. Thus their painters had to represent the third dimension on flat surfaces. Seven ways of showing solid form were invented: combined front and profile views, overlapping, foreshortening, "half-view," variations in line weight, arbitrary shading, and detached contour lines. Two ways of showing spatial depth were invented: overlapping and raising the level in the composition. Pottery painters never attained perfect command of space representation. Representa- tion of space and form in art is a product of the same kind of speculation and experimentation which produces geometry and philosophical conceptions of space. The Maya lacked the conception of dimensions and never formulated the relationship between even length and width. This restricted their arts; in painting, for example, representations of space and form could not be formulated but had to be reinvented each time they were used.

REPRESENTATIONAL ART includes not only the representation of visible nature

but also of the invisible or purely conceptual in symbolic form. Clearly, the purely conceptual has no dimensional form at all, and a pictorial representation of a concept can be nothing but arbitrary. It is characteristic of the Maya that they usually, perhaps always, imagined the invisible and conceptual as three-dimensional objects and not in terms of abstract signs. The persistence in the hieroglyphic signs of reference to three-dimensional objects is an example of this feature of Maya thought. Given the conception of the invisible as well as the visible in three-dimensional form, the direction of development in Maya art had to be toward the solution of the problems of representing space and form. The crux of these problems lies in the concept of dimensions, a concept which the Maya lacked.

The problems of space and form are both aspects of the representation of the third dimension on a two-dimensional surface. It is useful to discuss them separately because they create slightly different technical problems for the painter. The problem of space is that of suggesting a three-dimensional void on a flat surface, of hollowing out a place for forms to exist and events to occur. The problem of form is that of suggesting the mass and roundness of objects. The term "form" is used here to mean only three-dimensional material configurations, in

contrast to "shape," which is used for two-dimensional configurations. The representation of forms implies space for their existence, and in this sense the solution of the problem of form also provides space, but a very shallow or indefinite space. The creation of an illusion of space does not solve the problem of form because a spatial illusion is created by the relationships between things; the things may be two-dimensional - that is, flat shapes rather than round forms.

The earliest paintings show no concern for these problems. The earliest paintings in the lowland Maya region are an adjunct of plastic decoration based on the pottery techniques used to build the vessel. Throughout the Early Clas- sic period the paint is often used to decorate modeled knobs and relief areas; the forms that are painted are those that are actually present. When natural forms are represented with paint alone, they are reduced to shapes and adapted to the complex form of the vessel.

Nevertheless, the development of representational art is a crucial step toward illusions of space and form. In the lowlands this began in the Proto-Classic period, apparently in the east- ern part of the lowlands to judge by the designs painted on Holmul I pottery, which shows the only representational designs known on Proto- Classic pottery. Until the end of the Early Classic period, representational designs were made by combining geometric elements into birds, serpents, and human figures. The neces- sity for representing such complex natural forms as the human face and hands and the wings of birds broadened the painters' vocabulary of design elements.

Such subjects show the additive compositions characteristic of Early Classic painting, in which the individual elements remain autonomous within the larger subject. That the design elements were still considered abstract and the human figure itself simply an additive composition of independent design elements is shown by the painting on the exterior of a basal flange bowl from Holmul, in which the body, arms, legs, and headdress are all shown, but the head is left out (Fig. 1).

442



GRIEDER ] MAYA PAINTING ON POTTERY 443

FIG. 1. Painting from the exterior of a basal flange bowl from Holmul III. After Merwin and Vaillant 1932, Pi. 26 b.

Toward the end of the Early Classic period the painters achieved an integrated view of individual figures and animals. At this point they were confronted by the problem of suggesting the presence of hidden parts of the bodies, which is the essence of the problem of form. In such early works as the full figures painted on the floors of bowls found at Holmul (Merwin and Vaillant 1932, P1. 29, b) and Uaxactun (Fig. 2), both from the second phase of the Early Classic period, the artists evaded the problem by flat- tening the bodies into combinations of front and side views. By Early Classic 3, two other solu- tions had come into use, though both were used hesitantly; these were overlapping and foreshortening.

The representation of form on a flat surface is always dependent on our understanding of abstract symbols. We depend on binocular vision to see form in nature; in paintings, binocular vision simply reveals the true flatness of the surface. The overlapping of different parts of the body is a simple way of showing its mass. This method, which we find in use beginning in Ear- ly Classic 3, was ordinarily used with the conventional combination of front and profile views, as can be seen in the paintings on a stuccoed tripod from Tikal (Fig. 3). The arm and ornaments overlap the body, but the knot on the front of the costume is shown in front view rather than the profile view, which would accord with the pose of the figure. The same is true of the painting on a fine stuccoed tripod from Uax- actun shown by R. E. Smith (1955, Fig. 1 a, b). The parts of the body overlap and there is even a slight foreshortening of the shoulders, but the ornaments are in front view. The spots on the jaguar-skin cushions on which the figures are seated show a conventional method of foreshortening which Spinden (1957: 28) called "half- view"; this method was used in the Uaxactun- Tikal-Holmul region to show continuity in depth of patterns on soft materials, and in the Usuma- cinta Valley was adapted to show foreshortening of hard materials such as shields. It is done

simply by cutting off part of the pattern or surface to indicate that the design continues on an invisible or receding surface. This gives quite a natural appearance in soft materials, but it appears unnatural in hard materials which we do not imagine to bend.

In the first phase of Late Classic style we find many of the same effects on the Uaxactun Ini- tial Series Vase (Smith 1955, Fig. 72 b). The figures are drawn in an unspecified space, but their form is indicated by overlapping and by half-view of the pattern in the warriors' cloaks. The elaborate back ornaments are shown in a simplified profile view, in accord with the figures.

The same methods of showing form remained in use throughout the Late Classic period. Nota- ble examples are found on four vessels from Holmul (Merwin and Vaillant 1932, Pls. 29 c, 30 a), Yaloch (Gordon and Mason 1925-43, P1. XVII) and Uaxactun (Fig. 4), which show simi- lar paintings of a tall figure in elaborate cere- monial costume accompanied by a dwarf, a motif associated with many cultures and periods in Middle America, but of which the signifi- cance remains uncertain. In the four examples on Maya pottery, the dwarf is always shown in a consistent overlapping and foreshortened view. The tall figure is much more conserva- tive, with overlapping mostly avoided and the back ornament and the other ornaments all turned to a conventional combination of front and profile views. It is clear that the painters

E _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.. E.. . :...: :

FiG. 2. Interior of a basal flange bowl from Uaxactun, Tzakol 2. MuIseo Nacional de Antropologi'a y Etnologi'a, Gtiatemala.



444 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [ VOL. 29, No. 4,1964

FIG. 3. Human figure on the exterior of an Early Classic stuccoed tripod from Tikal. Dotted areas are scraped white.

had received the design for the tall figure al- ready formulated, probably from its use on stelae; it was too sacred to be tampered with, for it varies scarcely at all from vessel to vessel. The dwarfs vary a great deal and show the painters devising a new design out of their own knowledge and taking the opportunity to use their new ability to represent form in a more natural way.

Late Classic painters also invented three other methods for representing form. These are variations in line weight, the use of arbitrary shading, and detached contour lines.

In general, the Maya idea of line was regular, fine, and unvaried, for we find such lines in most of the best works. It is the line which provides the tension characteristic of Maya art. The long, flowing lines almost always end in a hook or an abrupt change of direction, conveying to the observer by the thrust and sudden checking of the line a sense of emotion suppressed. Maya painters intentionally varied the weight of lines within only two categories: heavy lines for major outlines of forms and lighter lines for details within these forms. This suggests form by the subordination of parts to a whole.

Arbitrary shading is found only in Late Clas- sic 2 and 3 and even then remains rare. It is derived from Early Classic abstract designs which use a band of red simply as another color in a flat design. The painter of the potsherd in the Erickson collection adapted this abstract method to representational meaning (Fig. 5). The red shading appears on both the upper and lower surfaces of the arms of the humanized coyote, and it is clear that the painter was not concerned with natural light. The broad red

band is intended simply to show the mass of the figure. It is absent from the clothing and ornaments, indicating that they were felt to be thin and flat compared to the living bodies, or perhaps that they were cold and lifeless compared to the living bodies, whose life is partly expressed in the red shading.

Detaching of the contour line also developed from an Early Classic abstract-design effect. Ear- ly Classic painters often intentionally stopped the fill color short of an outline, as we know from its appearance in symmetrical areas of the designs. The monkey on a Late Classic plate from Uaxactun (Fig. 6) shows the use of this technique to represent form. The dark areas of fill are detached from their contour lines on one or both sides. As the contour lies free of the surface color, there is a suggestion that it might lie in a different level of space from the surface of the form. Since in nature the contour of any visible curved surface does lie in a different level of space from every point of the surface - far- ther away if the surface curves toward us as a human body does - the observer interprets the independence of the contour line as an indica-

... .. . .. . . _

FIG. 4. Tall figure and dwarf painted in red, orange, and black on a Tepeu 2 cylinder vase from Uaxactun. Museo Nacional de Antropologi'a y Etnologi'a, Guatemala.




10

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FIG. 5. Exterior of a Late Classic cylinder vase sherd in the Erickson Collection. American Museum-Hayden Planetarium.

tion of the curvature of the surface it encloses. This is clear if we imagine the monkey painted solidly black; he would lose the character of a solid form and become a silhouette.

Detached contours appear only on dark-filled forms because dark areas take on a negative character in form in contrast to the positive character of areas of red or other warm or light colors. The detached contour permits the orange or buff background to show as a highlight, break- ing up the silhouette effect of the dark color and giving the dark areas a positive character.

When the human figure is shown in black, it also may show the use of detached contour, as on a vase from Poptun (Fig. 7). This method does not seem to have been known in the nearby highlands, for it was not used on the black figures in the Cham'a style.

Detached contour seems to have been a common method of indicating form in painting on pottery in the lowlands, but it is found only on pottery. Its invention and its popularity can be explained by the preference of the Maya for a linear expression, for this method allows the line

to retain its importance, rather than merge with the dark fill color.

The early painters of representational subjects did not immediately encounter the problem of representing space because they put just one ob- ject in each pictorial field. The floor of a bowl decorated with a single fish remains a flat or indefinite spatial field. When two fish are shown, we are more likely to relate them in our minds and think of the floor of the bowl as water -that is, as space. The representation of space depends on relationships between objects. On a bowl or plate the deepest space is ordinarily represented on the floor, with flat or indefinite space in the borders to act as a frame. With rare exceptions, each surface of the vessel has its own spatial treatment, different spatial fields being separated by a change in the form of the vessel.

We receive visual impressions of space in nature in seven ways: sharp outlines are closer than indefinite outlines, intense color is closer than the same color grayed, warm colors are closer than cool colors, and texture, detail, and animation are closer than plain areas and calm effects. While the fourth may be partly psychological, these first four are mainly aspects of aerial or atmospheric perspective, aspects which may be used independently to represent space, since a single characteristic of an experience of space acts as a sign representing other aspects which are not apparent.

The remaining three are aspects of linear perspective: larger is closer than smaller, overlapping areas are closer than those which are overlapped, and lower is closer than higher. The creation of an illusion of space requires command of the sciences of linear and aerial perspective, but the Maya were concerned only

FIG. 6. Part of the rim of a large Late- Classic plate of Tepeu 2 phase from Uaxactun, showing the use of detached contour on the monkey. Museo Nacional de An- tropologi'a y Etnologi'a, Guatemala.



446 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [ VOL. 29, No. 4, 1964

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*X:X . :..:S:.:.. :. ...u l

FIG. 7. Tall black figure with a red dwarf on his back, on a Late Classic cylinder vase from Poptun. Note the use of detached contours on the black figure. Museo Nacional de Antropologia y Etnologia, Guatemala.

with representing or symbolizing space, not cre- ating illusions. Of the seven ways of showing space, the Maya were certainly aware only of the last two overlapping, and lower is closer than higher. There is considerable evidence that they were unaware of the other five as ways of representing space; but there is some evidence that they were conscious of aerial perspective as a natural effect which must be overcome in art in the interest of clarity, and that they therefore intentionally reversed the aerial perspective in their paintings to give more texture, color, detail, or animation to elements which were overlapped or higher in the design. The intention was to keep all parts of the design equally strong and fully understandable, an intention which conflicts with the representation of space. The preference for a shallow pictorial space may reflect also the dominance of the art of relief sculpture in which illusions of space are usually very limited or absent as the Maya used that art.

Maya mural painters sometimes composed their subjects in discrete horizontal zones or registers, as we know from the early mural at Uaxactun and those at Bonampak. In at least some cases this was considered a way of representing space, the higher parts being the more distant. The pottery painters never adopted the use of registers for representational designs because it conflicts with the principle of a single spatial treatment in each pictorial field. Geo- metric designs could be arranged in registers because no pictorial space was represented.

The other common method of showing space used by the mural painters was to raise the level of objects in the composition, the higher being the more distant. Often this was combined with overlapping, as in the battle scene in Room 2 at Bonampak (Ruppert and others 1955, Fig. 28). The painters of the murals at Bonampak achieved an understandable and coherent space because they thoroughly understood their two simple space indicators. As far as we can tell from existing examples, the painters on pottery never attained complete command of overlapping in very complex compositions, but raising of the level to indicate distance was properly controlled.

An example of the kind of minor confusion which occurred in complex compositions is found in an extremely sophisticated Late Classic painting on a cylinder vase in the Villahermosa Museum. The complex poses and graceful ac- tions of the figures, and the use of eight colors and much delicate detail make this one of the finest and most complex of Maya paintings, of which Fig. 8 shows just a detail. (The complete painting may be seen in Leonard 1954 and in Covarrubias 1957, opposite p. 228.) The setting is terrace levels with a hammock hanging at one side. Since the painter had to wrap this con- tinuous scene around the cylindrical vase, he could never see the whole composition at one time, and this might account for the confusion in the terrace levels in one place where the painter left out a line and added an extra one lower down. Evidently, even the best Maya painters of pottery never attained complete command of spatial organization in complex compositions.

Several conclusions can be drawn. A common feature in all methods used by the Maya to represent space and form is that they are entirely artistic. They are based on the way paintings look, not on the way nature looks. Detached




contour is a good example, since it has no coun- terpart in our experience of nature and yet is effective in painting. Careful observation and experimentation obviously were applied to the problem of form and in the Late Classic period were beginning to be applied to the problem of space, but the observation and experimentation were applied to the art works of man, not to the natural environment. Arnheim (1954: 226) be- lieves that spatial illusions in art are always dis- covered "as a result of visual experimentation with lines and shapes and colors available to the artist," so that the abstraction of Maya representational methods is not necessarily evidence that they were unaware of visual effects in nature.

Visual experimentation in art is part of the intellectual life of a people. Visual experimentation among the Maya was directed at the problems of illusionism. The experimentation and speculation which results in illusionistic art is part of the same symbol-making process which produces philosophy and mathematics, especial- ly geometry, and they develop simultaneously. It would appear that there was sharing of ideas among these fields of thought. Among the Maya the philosophers, mathematicians, and painters may have been the same people, or at any rate members of a close-knit theocracy. In any given culture, illusionism in art, philosophical conceptions of space and form, and geometry develop together and at the same pace, barring extrin- sic factors such as the Islamic prohibition of representational art.

The Maya measured space and time by linear measures: day-by-day counting for time and probably by stretching cords for spatial measurement (Satterthwaite 1944: 33). The Maya never formulated a standard relationship even between the first and second dimensions - between length and width - for they did not have the conception of an angle as a measurable entity. In architecture the lengths of opposite walls are equal, indicating linear measurement, but the angles of corners always depart from 90 degrees, showing that the angle was guessed, not measured (Satterthwaite 1944: 33, and Morris and others 1931: 209-10). The precision of verti- cal lines shows that they knew the plumb line (Morris and others 1931: 209-10). A right angle could have been obtained very easily by using the cord to draw intersecting arcs to pro- duce a line perpendicular to the given line, but this knowledge, which would have permitted

them to square their buildings and level their floors and terraces, was never attained. The much more difficult method for obtaining a right angle used in ancient Egypt, India and China- by laying off a triangle whose sides are related as 3:4:5, using cords and stakes (Cajori 1938:10) - was never used in the Americas and provides a notable instance of nondiffusion of functional knowledge.

The Maya conception of space and time as measurable only by linear extension goes far to explain the Maya artist's use of processional compositions of figures standing in a line equi- distant from the viewer, and the representation of solid forms as if flattened to provide measurable surfaces. The appearance of overlapping and twisted poses is contrary to this conception, and such appearances remained unformulated. Each time they were represented they had to be reinvented.

Representation of space and form is found only on fine wares, which we presume were used for ceremonies performed by the theocracy. These paintings were done on the simplest pos- sible pottery forms, clearly made to serve as supports for paintings. Such vessel forms are distinct from the elaborately modeled Early Classic forms, which show the painter as a mere

C7

FIG. 8. Detail from a Late Classic cylinder vase in the Museum at Villahermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. Note the confusion in the terrace levels below and beside the smaller figure at left.



448 AMERICAN ANTIQUITY [ VOL. 29, No. 4, 1964

assistant to the potter. With the violation of the pottery surface by representations of the third dimension, the painters emancipated themselves and gained artistic dominance over the potters. We might guess that the artistic dominance of the painters reflects a dominant social position, the painters being part of the priestly hierarchy or closely associated with it. Vase-painting by the theocrats would also account for the sharing of artistic, geometric, and philosophic ideas, the same few individuals being active in all branches of thought. With the collapse of high culture in the central lowlands, representational painting disappeared. Unlike the potters' arts, it had not penetrated the folk culture, but disappeared with the other attainments of the theo- cratic class, which we call Classic culture.

Acknowledgments. Part of the research for this paper was done on a Smith-Mundt Fellowship to Guatemala awarded in 1959-60. Carlos Samayoa Chinchilla and An- tonio Tejeda F., Directors of the Museo Nacional de An- tropologia y Etnologia in Guatemala, were very helpful in permitting full use of the rich collection of the Mu- seum. Linton Satterthwaite and David M. Robb, both of the University of Pennsylvania, provided much help and advice at the beginning of the study of this subject dur- ing work on a doctoral dissertation on painting on Maya pottery. Mrs. Anne Van Buren, University of Texas graduate student in the history of art, has given some stimulating suggestions. This paper was read at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Boulder, Colorado, on May 2, 1963.

ARNHEIM, RUDOLF

1954 Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles.

CAJORI, FLORIAN

1938 A History of Mathematics. Macmillan, New York.

COVARRUBIAS, MIGUEL

1957 Indian Art of Mexico and Central America. Knopf, New York.

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1925-43 Examples of Maya Pottery in the Museum and Other Collections. 3 volumes. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Phila- delphia.

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1954 Dos Extraordinarias Vasijas del Museo de Villa Hermosa; El Vaso de Tabasco. Yan, No. 3, pp. 96-102. Mexico, D.F.

MERWIN, RAYMOND E. AND GEORGE CLAPP VAILLANT

1932 The Ruins of Holmul, Guatemala. Memoirs of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Vol. 3, No. 2. Cambridge.

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1931 The Temple of the Warriors. 2 volumes. Car- negie Institution of Washington, Washington, D.C.

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TATIANA PROSKOURIAKOFF

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Representation of Space and Form in Maya Painting on Pottery

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